Some of the consequences of atheism..alien life forms

[Rum]

Because we are so human-centric it sometimes takes me a little by surprise when I have some sort of insight into the fact that there is almost certainly no overseer to this thing we are in. Today for example, on Radio 4, there was a discussion about the chances of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. The general consensus was that sheer probability alone, given the billions of planets there are would mean that it is likely something akin to us or very different perhaps, with consciousness of some sort will have or has arisen.

The thing that struck me was that without a daddy in the sky these phenomenon will have come and gone, lived out their fates and strange existences, done the sorts of things we have and the very weird and strange things their alien circumstances will have required and nobody, nothing and nowhere will there have been a record.

An odd thought I wanted to share.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Intelligent life is probably rare (or maybe inevitable, I don't know), but the odds that two different alien races were close enough together in time and space to interact are, I'll bet, very large against. So, we will all play out our existence without ever knowing if we're alone.

[Thinking Aloud]

I suddenly feel very small and fleeting. Again.

[AshtonBlack]

Yeah.
On the plus side, given the advances in exo planet research, I don't doubt we'll have some mass spectrometry and possibly visuals of earth sized rocky planets, within my lifetime. That's a start, we should be able to infer life, if there is any.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I am coming to the opinion that intelligent life is inevitable.

I base that on the fact of convergent evolution. In any given, isolated environment, species evolve with similar characteristics in order to fill the same available niches. Thus we have ant-eating mammals with widely varying genetic heritages but remarkably similar morphologies in the Americas, Africa and Australia; small, hovering birds that feed on nectar and pollinate their feedstocks in both the Americas and Africa; similar looking, drought-adapted plants in every desert in the world, etc.

It makes sense that something as genetically beneficial as intelligence (at least in the relatively short term - look at how many of us bastards there are compared with only a few hundred years ago!) would arise regularly once a niche was available (ie., when we have fucked off, some other intelligent species would almost certainly arise.)

What I am beginning to doubt, however, is the long-term viability of such intelligent species. However, evolution does not think in terms of the long-term - it is all about tiny, immediate advantages having a cumulative effect. So, I think that intelligence is almost certainly an inevitable result of life and evolution once a certain level of complexity has arisen.

[klr]

Did the discussion mention the Drake Equation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Did the discussion mention Drake's Equation?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation

The most important, and limiting thing about Drake's is that there is a limited amount of time another civilization would emit signals we can detect. We're already heading away from broadcast signals, and Marconi's "S" was just a century or so ago. In fifty years will we "radiate" at all?

On the other hand, we might just come up with a system that is exactly what other "people" are looking for. They might consider radio like we would consider sending a letter by clipper ship.

[AshtonBlack]

I am coming to the opinion that intelligent life is inevitable.

I base that on the fact of convergent evolution. In any given, isolated environment, species evolve with similar characteristics in order to fill the same available niches. Thus we have ant-eating mammals with widely varying genetic heritages but remarkably similar morphologies in the Americas, Africa and Australia; small, hovering birds that feed on nectar and pollinate their feedstocks in both the Americas and Africa; similar looking, drought-adapted plants in every desert in the world, etc.

It makes sense that something as genetically beneficial as intelligence (at least in the relatively short term - look at how many of us bastards there are compared with only a few hundred years ago!) would arise regularly once a niche was available (ie., when we have fucked off, some other intelligent species would almost certainly arise.)

What I am beginning to doubt, however, is the long-term viability of such intelligent species. However, evolution does not think in terms of the long-term - it is all about tiny, immediate advantages having a cumulative effect. So, I think that intelligence is almost certainly an inevitable result of life and evolution once a certain level of complexity has arisen.

I think it's why I like the treatment of alien life in sci-fi by people like Peter F. Hamilton and Iain M. Banks. There is no real way to predict how an alien biology would work, but it doesn't mean that the "intelligence" niche could not be filled.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I am coming to the opinion that intelligent life is inevitable.

I base that on the fact of convergent evolution. In any given, isolated environment, species evolve with similar characteristics in order to fill the same available niches. Thus we have ant-eating mammals with widely varying genetic heritages but remarkably similar morphologies in the Americas, Africa and Australia; small, hovering birds that feed on nectar and pollinate their feedstocks in both the Americas and Africa; similar looking, drought-adapted plants in every desert in the world, etc.

It makes sense that something as genetically beneficial as intelligence (at least in the relatively short term - look at how many of us bastards there are compared with only a few hundred years ago!) would arise regularly once a niche was available (ie., when we have fucked off, some other intelligent species would almost certainly arise.)

What I am beginning to doubt, however, is the long-term viability of such intelligent species. However, evolution does not think in terms of the long-term - it is all about tiny, immediate advantages having a cumulative effect. So, I think that intelligence is almost certainly an inevitable result of life and evolution once a certain level of complexity has arisen.

I think it's why I like the treatment of alien life in sci-fi by people like Peter F. Hamilton and Iain M. Banks. There is no real way to predict how an alien biology would work, but it doesn't mean that the "intelligence" niche could not be filled.

Exactly. And the majority of characteristics that we think of as uniquely human might well be exactly those that any intelligent species would naturally evolve, whatever their genetic heritage.

[AshtonBlack]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

Besides carbon-based life, conjecture I've heard included sulphur-based and silicon-based.

[AshtonBlack]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

Besides carbon-based life, conjecture I've heard included sulphur-based and silicon-based.

Indeed. We may even "invent" some ourselves, eventually.

[Horwood Beer-Master]

Intelligent life is probably rare (or maybe inevitable, I don't know), but the odds that two different alien races were close enough together in time and space to interact are, I'll bet, very large against. So, we will all play out our existence without ever knowing if we're alone.

Actually I disagree. Even if on average the distance between any two islands of intelligent life existing at any one time is way too far for contact to ever be made (say 0.33 found per Milky Way sized Galaxy), the vast size of the universe and the laws of probability mean that there must be (very rare) places somewhere where two such islands would be found close enough (in fact there'd be some exceptionally rare locations where three or even more may be 'within range' of each other).

Of course this thought does nothing really to give us hope of making contact ourselves. Even if you used (for the sake of argument) a much more optimistic estimate of the frequency of intelligent life (say 42 at any one time per Milky Way sized Galaxy), well, 1/42 of the volume of this galaxy still represents a huge big vast lonely area to find yourself in.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Here's the thing, there are only so many elements in the periodic table with knowable chemical reactions, leading to acids and so on. Given this, there is a finite number of ways life could survive. This could aid our search, when looking for life "out there."

Besides carbon-based life, conjecture I've heard included sulphur-based and silicon-based.

Indeed. We may even "invent" some ourselves, eventually.

Betting on "silicon-based"? "Grey Goo Planet!"

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Intelligent life is probably rare (or maybe inevitable, I don't know), but the odds that two different alien races were close enough together in time and space to interact are, I'll bet, very large against. So, we will all play out our existence without ever knowing if we're alone.

Actually I disagree. Even if on average the distance between any two islands of intelligent life existing at any one time is way too far for contact to ever be made (say 0.33 found per Milky Way sized Galaxy), the vast size of the universe and the laws of probability mean that there must be (very rare) places somewhere where two such islands would be found close enough (in fact there'd be some exceptionally rare locations where three or even more may be 'within range' of each other).

Of course this thought does nothing really to give us hope of making contact ourselves. Even if you used (for the sake of argument) a much more optimistic estimate of the frequency of intelligent life (say 42 at any one time per Milky Way sized Galaxy), well, 1/42 of the volume of this galaxy still represents a huge big vast lonely area to find yourself in.

Now factor in time.